Baroness Berger (Lab)

My Lords, I am dismayed at the decision to spend some time today on process instead of continuing to consider the raft of outstanding issues that we otherwise would have considered, so that the substantive challenges could be addressed in any future legislation. Today we would have considered how an assisted death would interact with the NHS constitution. As we take note of the overall progress that has been made in this House, I will respond to a number of the claims that we have heard today, in some cases more or less from the moment the Bill arrived before us last summer. The claim today has been that the scrutiny that has taken place has been unnecessary or unusual and that in any event, the elected House had already undertaken sufficient scrutiny before we began. The Bill was first published in the way any Private Member’s Bill is. We have heard in this Chamber today some attempt to equate it with government Bills such as the Crime and Policing Bill and the welfare rights Bill, but there was no prior public consultation on this Bill. There was no pre-legislative scrutiny, no Green Paper, no White Paper, no international comparison. Even at the earliest stage, when the Bill was first presented, it was several times longer than any other Private Member’s Bill, weighing in at 43 clauses. It has now been expanded to 59 clauses and three schedules. The House of Lords Library tells us that this is the longest Private Member’s Bill ever. This is in stark contrast to previous well-known Private Members’ legislation on issues of conscience that supporters have sought to use as precedents, such as the seven-clause-long Abortion Act and the four-clause-long Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act. Both benefited from a commission which fulfilled the pre-legislative scrutiny role that this Bill has sorely lacked. After Second Reading, the amending stages in the other place began in Committee with the overwhelming majority of amendments being rejected by a Committee made up of 14 Members who supported the sponsor, in contrast to nine MPs who raised concerns about the Bill. Two-thirds of the way through Committee in the Commons, about 62 hours in, the most significant safeguard in the original Bill—the High Court stage at the end of the process, involving a judge—was removed. It was replaced by the new untrialled process, involving non-judicial panels overseen by a new, tsar-like figure, the voluntary assisted dying commissioner. This seismic change was made without any input from the 627 Members of the other place who were not on the Bill Committee. Significantly, no evidence was taken on that totally new process. On Report in the Commons, scrutiny was limited to just over two days, and of 77 amendments tabled—